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GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) – The World Health Organization said Wednesday it hoped that Covid-19 would no longer be a public health emergency in 2023, as it urged China to share information that could pinpoint how the pandemic started. As the third anniversary of the original outbreak rolls around, the WHO said the virus was here to stay but would need managing alongside other respiratory illnesses. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the weekly Covid death toll […]
PARIS, France (AFP) – This was supposed to be the comeback year for the world economy following the Covid pandemic. Instead, 2022 was marked by a new war, record inflation and climate-linked disasters. It was a “polycrisis” year, a term popularized by historian Adam Tooze. Get ready for more gloom in 2023. “The number of crises has increased since the start of the century,” said Roel Beetsma, professor of macroeconomics at the University of Amsterdam “Since World […]
(Eagle News) — The Philippines logged 1,238 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, Dec. 1. According to the Department of Health, the additional cases pushed the country’s COVID-19 tally to 4,037,547. Of these, 18,412 are active. Metro Manila logged the highest number of new COVID-19 cases in the last 14 days, with 4,385. It was followed by Calabarzon with 1925, Western Visayas with 1051, Central Luzon with 1025, and Central Visayas with 958. Of the provinces […]
San Francisco, United States (AFP) – Twitter said it has stopped enforcing a policy intended to prevent the spread of Covid misinformation, as new owner Elon Musk — who has clashed previously with US officials over pandemic safety rules — continues to remake its content moderation policies. The move comes after the mercurial billionaire reinstated a slew of accounts on the social media network that had previously been banned for violating its content rules, such as […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) – Australia’s most populous state scrapped 33,000 fines issued for breaking Covid-19 rules Tuesday, after a top court ruled they were invalid. New South Wales authorities were forced to retract more than half their pandemic-era fines, which were found to be too vague in describing the offence. Revenue NSW said that because of the “technical” breach it would withdraw “fail to comply” penalties believed to be worth tens of millions of dollars. “Fail […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) – Overworked, underpaid and thoroughly fed up, Wang’s troubles deepened even further when authorities abruptly locked down the delivery driver’s Beijing apartment block earlier this month. Officials in the Chinese capital have doubled down on the country’s hallmark zero-Covid policy in recent weeks, one of an array of cities to impose sweeping shutdowns, mass testing and teleworking mandates as caseloads have hit all-time highs. Wang is not alone in feeling frustrated. The ruling […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) – US President Joe Biden is closely monitoring unrest in China by protesters demanding an end to Covid lockdowns and greater political freedoms, the White House said Monday, as smaller demonstrations spilled over outside the country. The comments came after hundreds of people took to the streets in China’s major cities over the weekend, in a rare outpouring of public frustration that spread to international Chinese-speaking communities as well. “He’s monitoring this. […]
SINGAPORE, Singapore (AFP) – Singapore warned on Wednesday that economic growth could slow to a trickle next year owing to weakness in key export markets including the United States, Europe and China, as rising interest rates and the Ukraine war cause headwinds. The city-state’s economic performance is often seen as a useful barometer of the global environment because of its reliance on trade with the rest of the world. The trade ministry said it expected growth […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) – China will no longer host the season-ending Badminton World Tour Finals in December because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the sport’s governing body said on Tuesday. The Badminton World Federation had planned to host the flagship $1.5 million event in Guangzhou between December 14 and 18, but the event will now take place in Bangkok, Thailand, the previous week. China has cancelled almost all international sports competitions since Covid emerged there in 2019, […]
Nusa Dua, Indonesia | AFP | Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Tuesday he had tested positive for Covid-19, after hosting more than a dozen world leaders including US President Joe Biden at a summit in Phnom Penh. Asia’s longest-ruling leader said in a Facebook post that he got the positive result on arrival in Indonesia for a G20 summit, but was not experiencing any symptoms. Hun Sen had mask-less encounters with leaders from […]
Hong Kong, China | AFP | by James LEGGE Fans of the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens shrugged off a three-year pandemic absence as the weekend sporting spectacle kicked off with fancy dress — and Covid rules. Teams from nations as far-flung as Samoa, Spain and South Africa converged for one of Asia’s biggest sports events, which Hong Kong bigwigs hope can prove that normality is on the way for the city. Hong Kong has languished […]
by Julien DURY Agence France Presse Paris, France (AFP) — While some may have been surprised that the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to a paleogeneticist Monday, researchers say understanding our distant ancestors helps explain modern human health — even when it comes to Covid. New Nobel laureate Svante Paabo is considered the father of both paleogenetics and paleogenomics, which aims to reconstruct the genetic information of long extinct human relatives. But the prize […]
